Further thoughts. * I've never tried to use desktop components for SUSE or Redhat on S390X. I think you would have to do some checking to make sure they available.
* I've looked up some old docs, and configuring a multi-user Linux desktop required 4MB per user * If I were you, I would simply setup a new Linux guest, install SUSE and play. You would be able to get a lot of sizing info pretty simply. Matthew On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 7:39 AM, Matthew Donald <matthew.b.don...@gmail.com>wrote: > SUSE linux would work fine in this sort of environment, but it would need > to have the desktop customised considerably to remove any 'single user' > gadgets and the like. As noted above there may be issues getting Evolution > on S390x. Also, Evolution and the Ximian desktop are coded in Mono, which > give you memory issues similar to Java. > > Didn't Evolution used to be open source? Did Novell make it closed source > when they took over Ximian? If it's open source, then it should be possible > to get someone to port Mono (which is open source) and Evolution (which is > written in Mono) to S390x. That's the advantage of open source. > > Matthew > > > On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 6:13 AM, Ward, Mike S <mw...@ssfcu.org> wrote: > >> Wow it does give me food for thought. Sounds like you’re well versed in >> these types of environments. Another question if you don’t mind. In this >> environment would SUSE linux work? And would they be able to use Ximian and >> Evolution to connect to an exchange server for email/calendar and those type >> of office functions? >> >> >> >> *From:* The IBM z/VM Operating System [mailto:ib...@listserv.uark.edu] *On >> Behalf Of *Matthew Donald >> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 13, 2009 2:07 PM >> *To:* IBMVM@LISTSERV.UARK.EDU >> *Subject:* Re: Virtualized Desktop >> >> >> >> Firstly, you need to know the expected environment before you can work out >> anything. Lets assume that you want to provide Firefox for browsing, Lotus >> Notes for email, Symphony for office and x3270 for mainframe access. All of >> these run under Linux and, in addition, Notes and Symphony are Eclipse-based >> which means JVM's. >> >> What I *wouldn't* do is give each user a separate Linux guest. I'd >> probably look at around 4 Linux guests. These guest would have all 1000 >> users logged onto them. >> >> One guest would provide the desktop. That is, every user would log onto a >> single guest using X-Windows and maybe Gnome (but I'd look at Enlightenment >> as it has a lower memory footprint). The desktop would have icons for >> Notes, Symphony etc. Clicking an icon would run a remote app on one of the >> other guests. Any user running Firefox or x3270 would run the app on this >> guest. >> >> A second guest would run Notes. Every time a user clicked the Notes icon, >> it would start it would start the Notes app on the second guest. >> >> The third and fourth guests would have Symphony workload spread between >> them. When a user clicked the Symphony icon, half would run the app on the >> third guest and half on the fourth guest. >> >> Essentially, the model is to have the basic desktop and the non-java apps >> on one guest and the java workload spread over the other three guests. >> >> I know a config along these lines would work, since the State of Florida >> did something like this in the late-90's. They were using four 8-way Intel >> P3 boxes running Linux with Netscape, Wordperfect and Quattro. I'm pretty >> sure they were supporting more than 1000 users. >> >> As to resources, I don't know of any benchmarks, so the following is based >> on my experience with z/VM +z/Linux + Websphere. My gut feel is that you >> could probably run this sort of workload with 4 IFL's and somewhere between >> 96G and 128G, depending on the number of simultaneous users. I may be >> over-estimating the CPU workload. Most of the memory requirement would be >> for JVM's. I'd allow somewhere between 128M and 256M per JVM. So long as >> the GC was running no more frequently than every 8 seconds or so and each GC >> run was freeing at least 30% of the heap on each run then the sizing would >> be adequate. >> >> Another problem you are likely to hit is in networking. The X-Windows >> protocol has outbound connections from the Linux guest to the terminal. I >> don't know about your environment, but many site use VPN's internally with >> each group being restricted to a single VPN sandbox. The problem is that >> many VPN clients (such as Aventail) only allow connections from the terminal >> to the server, and not the other way around. >> >> Hope this gives you food for thought >> >> Matthew Donald >> >> On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 7:30 AM, Ward, Mike S <mw...@ssfcu.org> wrote: >> >> Hello, all. I have a question. It seems that we are looking into a >> virtualized desktop environment (Single Image) on our distributed side. >> I kind of laugh at this because that's where we came from with VM and an >> OS running under VM (Green Screen) long ago and now it's making full >> circle. In VM how do you determine the amount of hardware MIPS, Disk, >> Etc... for let's say 1000 users? Is there any kind of formula to go by? >> I know in the distributed environment, it will probably take a lot of >> disk space, and as far as performance I don't think it would be as >> snappy as a real VM system. I used to work at a shop where we had 2500 >> users and a few with APL, that's right APL. Anyone that's been around >> knows what APL programmers did for VM. And in that shop response time >> was good even under MVS/CICS under VM. 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